Because healthy people had immune systems that were like personal security for their insides. The better the security, the less likely they were to get sick. I always imagined most people had Liam Neeson phoning up the flu virus the moment somebody within ten miles sneezed.
I will find you. And I will kill you.
I actually couldn't remember if those were the lines. I wasn't much of an action movie kind of girl. Romance was my jam.
But my body didn't have Liam Neeson keeping the germs at bay. It was more like having Paul Blart—the mall cop, for the uninitiated. And honestly, that was probably giving it way too much credit.
If I was being honest, my immune system wasn't even on the same level as an old lady on a scooter with a heavy cane. My body basically had an open-door policy. Bad germs? Come on in! I could thank my mom for that genetic lotto win.
The smell of spaghetti sauce mingling with ground beef drifted from the kitchen towards me. I sniffed deeper, picking up the garlic and basil, too.
My big sister, Maisey, was a halfway good cook. She could season food and follow recipes with the best of them. The problem was she almost always managed to forget to pull things out of the oven or out of the pan soon enough. It meant everything was well-seasoned and then baked, broiled, or fried into oblivion.
Thankfully, tonight she’d whipped everything up and asked me to heat it up around the time she’d be coming back from teaching her yoga class. No burned food tonight. Unless I got too wrapped up in my book.
The rain had finally let up, which meant Chicago's night life was back on schedule. Below me, people were already starting to thicken the crowds on the street below.
Beside me, Gravy Boat purred contentedly. I tried to scratch his ear, but he did his best impersonation of a naked alligator roll—biting my palm while hugging and kicking me.
Once the barrage of kicks and bites was over, he let me go, composed himself, and gave his paw a dignified lick.
I rubbed at the place where his claw had got me while I studied the people below. I focused on a young couple holding hands. The girl was wearing the sort of bright sun dress that made me imagine they hadn't been dating long. The guy looked a little like a former skater guy with the thick black gauge earrings and tattoos, but he had a button-up shirt on. It was cute, and I smiled while I watched him lead her by the hand through the puddles on the sidewalk.
I imagined they were going out for their date. Maybe dinner and then a night spent ice skating. Or maybe they'd just grab takeout and go back to his place to stream a movie.
Once they were gone, I noticed a man by himself. He looked straight out of one of the romance books I liked to read. Square jaw, muscular, and devastatingly handsome. He was waiting at the street corner with his phone out. Maybe he'd called an Uber, I thought. Either way, it gave me plenty of time to creep on him from my perch at the window.
As if he knew what was going through my head, Gravy Boat let out a judgy meow and then started aggressively licking his asshole.
I tossed a balled-up napkin at him, but it only made him get more intense.
Disgusted, I looked back to the guy and tried to tune out Gravy Boat's noise and my sister's clanging from the kitchen. She usually had no idea how loud she was being because she wore noise canceling headphones and blasted music to herself. I’d joked several times that she wouldn’t hear if someone broke in and decided to murder me, then I’d violently knocked on wood.
I pulled out a sheet of paper and started writing a letter to the guy. Yes, I knew it was incredibly dorky and also technically littering. But I figured the universe could cut me a little karmic slack considering the hand I'd been dealt. Sometimes I liked to write notes to people I saw on the street, fold them into paper airplanes, and then chuck them out the window. Just about every single time I did this, the airplane got sucked back against the building where it fell uselessly to the street, or it got pulled along with cars on the road and pulverized into oblivion by the tires.
So when I wrote the note, there wasn't any real part of me that expected Mr. Romance Hero on the street corner to ever see it.
Dear Stranger,
Your eyes are like fire and your lips are soft pillows I wish I could sink into. We'll never meet, but I'll dream of the day I could've got your name. Your smile. Your hand.
I'll keep wishing you were mine,
From the girl in the 3rd floor window, Apartment 12b.
I rolled my eyes at my own words as I folded up the paper airplane. A poet, I was not. Unfortunately, being a ravenous reader hadn't even given me access to any of the ability the writers I devoured had. But I still folded the little airplane, knowing it would never reach the hunk on the street.
I had to yank and grunt a little to get our paint-chipped, ancient apartment window open. When I did, the sounds of the street came rushing in more clearly, along with the musty wet smell of the fallen rain.
I stared at the man on the corner, aimed, and hesitated.
I'd never written my apartment number on one of my doomed love notes before. Why had I done that?
I'd been poised to throw the airplane, but I relaxed my arm and set it down on the windowsill, laughing at my own stupidity. Yeah, Sylvie. Unless
